9 Leadership Frameworks From Elon Musk, Dr. House, & More

Shaan Puri

What's up y'all sean here sam is in europe traveling around with the fam and so I'm on my own today and I wanted to do something cool and I think I got a great idea so I believe here's my guess I think this pod is gonna be one that people really really like because I know I would have wanted to hear this at some. In time and the reason why is because most of the people who listen to this podcast are some form of leadership right you might have started your own company or your own business you might be kind of an exec somewhere or a manager somewhere or you wanna be a leader right so most people who don't wanna be leaders are not listening to a podcast like this so the problem is me and everybody else sucks you know everybody sucks the first time that they are managing people and and this isn't like you know how to manage people 101 there's a lot of books that are written about this there's some best practices there's common sense but I wanted to share some of the unorthodox some of the weird things that I do that I have found work for me and they might not work for everybody but they work for me and not all of these people are gonna agree with not all these will work for you but again they all work for me nobody I couldn't find any of this stuff in a book I heard about these either from somebody or I just kind of made it up on on my own and so I think I have 5 maybe 6 different things that I do that are unorthodox but work okay so let me start with number 1 and this is called doctor house it's inspired by doctor house so if anybody watches the tv show house he always does this thing the show is like there's this genius doctor but he's kind of like a curmudgeon and all the other doctors really respect him because he's amazing but he's kind of hard to work with one of the things he does that's amazing but hard to work with is he has these like 3 junior doctors who are kind of like he's I don't know advising them or whatever they work under him and when a patient comes in and they run a test to try to figure out what's wrong with the person he doesn't just look at it and say here's what's wrong with the person right first of all it's usually not that straightforward 2nd of all even if he kind of has an idea he doesn't spoon feed it to his to his team instead he will usually slap the the the the like maybe the scan or the data or the the x-ray or whatever up on a screen and he'll say what do you see here or he'll say what's weird about this or he'll say what's interesting about this and then the team has to start thinking and getting curious and looking at the thing and saying well there must be something there what do I see and this is really effective I do this all the time I will take let's say some data I'm looking at when I'm curious about something I see something that makes me go and what I used to do is I used to just like share that with the team hey guys here's what I found look at this data this data shows that a is b and c right I would like give them a conclusion I'm basically spoon feeding them an answer they'd read it they'd say yeah that makes sense and then they would go on with their day right because they didn't have to struggle to understand it they didn't have to be curious enough to go find it they just got spoon fed an answer and they say yeah yeah I'm not surprised by that alright I'm gonna move on or oh that's weird okay sounds like you got an answer I'm gonna again move on

Shaan Puri

so I do it the other

Shaan Puri

way which does 3 things 1 it trains the team to be curious and clever right because you're not looking for some luck I'm not telling you to go do 10 more analyses I'm saying there's something in this what is it it's a little bit of a riddle the second is it's not a gotcha right like I'm at genuinely asking because they will see things that you don't see so even if you saw one of the interesting things they might find 2 others that you didn't really appreciate and the last is it trains everybody on how to because you know maybe one person out of the group will see the interesting thing but the other 4 will say why didn't I see that and that trial and error that like guess and check is how people get better at stuff so you'll train a team of curious clever people who get good at finding insights in data and so that's the doctor house technique I recommend you try it rather than spoon feeding your team answers okay the second one I learned from my wife my wife was a consultant and she used to go to these companies and I was like it was always like I'm getting alignment right she would go it would be a board meeting of like you know yahoo's board meeting it's like you have 10 executives at yahoo and they cannot they all think they're on the same page and then only when you ask them certain questions do you realize that like everybody has like a different you know game plan vision of what we're trying to do here etcetera etcetera so she got good at assessing that out but people are a little bit not defensive but they're a little bit limited when you just ask them very literal logical questions that tap into only the analytical part of their brain like if you say what are our 3 key objectives for the year that sort of feels like they're taking a math test and so she does this thing that was called the holiday party the holiday party tactic is she had me go she had me go to a whiteboard and she goes alright let's fast forward it's christmas eve of this year and we're at the company holiday party I want you to start drawing what's at that company holiday party I'm like what do you mean she's like just draw things that would make it an awesome company holiday party so I'm like okay so all of a sudden I'm having kind of fun I'm something creative I'm drawing I'm just thinking of cool shit that could be at a party right so my guard is down and so you know I'll draw like whatever there's a dj and I we kind of laugh because the dj booth is like you know my drawing is bad and then I'll draw the next thing and then she'll say okay what's on the what are you celebrating and that question what are we celebrating it's like that's kind of like what are we trying to do this year right what's the milestone that we hit and instead of saying what are we trying to do it's assuming it's already done that we're already celebrating we're popping bottles because we hit 1,000,000 users or 10,000,000 downloads or 100,000,000 in revenue whatever it is and so it's you know we'd say our our big north star goal because it's like that screen can only have one big thing on it that we're all cheersing our glass to so what is that north star metric and then she would say cool let's walk around like you know who's who's at this party and you know there's a little exercise and as she unfolded this party it kind of at first it got me in the mood for winning right because it's like I'm already working backwards from the assumption that we've won then I identify the north star goal and then after we do that little game it only takes 2 minutes then we would say alright so how are we gonna get there right what what would be the things that we would need to do now so that that party happens and all of a sudden we're we're talking and brainstorming from a place of certainty and confidence rather than fear and doubt about not being able to pull it off and the stress right because when you're in fight or flight your brain only works in a very limited capacity compared to when you are you know at ease relaxed which is why you know great ideas come to you in the shower because you're relaxed you have warm water pouring on top of your head and so your brain kind of melts away and can start to you know put together different data points that are not there when you're tense and so I love this tactic of the holiday party drawing game it really loosens people up it gets them thinking it focuses them on the north star goal and then when you make a plan after that they go into that plan from in a state of mind of we already won okay now here's the opposite this is called the the misery misery loves company tactic okay so whenever we're making a plan at the beginning of any plan everything seems achievable and everyone's optimistic and it's hard to say it's one thing to ask somebody what are the key risks in this and then people you know again they get a little defensive they're using the logical part of your brain so a better question is you know if I was to let's say you know we you go do this I go do my thing and we get busy and you know 6 months from now 12 months from now we we catch back up we're we're getting a beer here at the local pub in in the afternoon it's 4 in the afternoon we go grab a beer and we say man that idea was so cool let's assume it went wrong right so man that idea was so cool I can't believe it didn't work out and what happened what is the what is the most likely reason we would give that things went south and this is a way to identify the core risk the chief assumption the riskiest proposition in your plan is to sort of work backwards from we're getting a beer we're hanging out it's already failed and we say man that thing had so much potential what went wrong what what do you think is the number one reason it might go wrong and then because you're identifying that upfront you can now like work against that you can get you can game plan around that okay here's another one I find that people get very defensive about the status quo especially the leaders because as a leader you're sort of responsible for the way that the company works right you're like you're responsible for how many people work at your company right if I said did you hire too many people most people don't wanna say yes and the reality is that certainly I don't know 20 30 40% of the time the answer truly is yes you've hired too many people but if you ask ceos they'll rarely ever say yes and in the same way you'll say are you working on a bunch of useless stuff or are you working on a bunch of extraneous things they would say no I mean these are all important they're valuable right so people get defensive about their current plan and so how do you get how do you get people to to identify the fat in their their plan right be able to trim the fat without the pressure and the stress of them feeling like they're wrong or they're being blamed or that they're gonna have to make some tough decisions to have some hard conversations and because of that they just wanna avoid it so here's what I do we play a game it's sort of like that you know that f murder mary game right where you decide you know if out of these three choices who would you who would you murder who would you marry who would you f so similarly let's just focus on the murder part which is like if I asked you right so I could sit down with with any manager in my company I could say in your team if you I know you love your team and I know they're they're they're all great they're all great in their own ways but if you had to do it what would be the 3 who would be the 3 people that you would cut if you had to cut I'm not saying you will where you're not gonna cut anybody but who would those 3 people be similarly like out of all the projects and initiatives you're doing what are the 3 that you would cut if you had to cut 3 initiatives off which ones would go and you could do this with anything right customers of all your customers on the roster your clients who are the 3 that you would cut where they're just a pain in the ass it's not worth the juice is not worth the squeeze and if you can create a safe a safe space basically where somebody can freely identify what they would cut if they were gonna cut but don't worry we're not asking you to cut anything and you do it yourself right you're not just asking others to do this but you do it yourself you think aloud maybe do it as a group like hey what would we what projects would we cut you know which team members are really not you know are at the bottom right there certainly is a top and a bottom who who is that right which customers are the top and the bottom and if you can identify those it plants a seed and people once they've said it out loud they've heard a truth it's very hard to unsee a truth and it might be a month later or 2 months later or 3 months later but eventually they will decide to trim some of the fat either on their team their projects or the client list that will help the team grow so that's the f burgundy tactic okay I think I've done what is that 4 tactics okay let's do another one this is the superpower one so this is a way to build people up so I did this at my my last startup and people really resonate with this which is I made a presentation about each person in the team I did this on a friday afternoon I said hey guys let's go do a little happy hour and I said I got a presentation for you guys I said you know I've learned that in it in any team you can you can look for 2 types of people you can look for people who lack weaknesses meaning they're pretty well rounded they have no fatal flaws but they may not be great at anything right they're they're just good they're they're at least good at everything or you can have some people that are amazing at some things and kind of weak in other areas and I've learned that the the best performing teams are filled with people who are amazing in at least one area so you're hiring for an extreme strength not a lack of weakness right that's a andreessen horowitz framework that I really loved and so I said I'd like to you know I said but the funny thing is for most people they don't they're not even aware of what their extreme strength is and because you're too close to it it's so normal for you to be great at it you don't even really realize you're great at it at some.

Shaan Puri

It's other people who. It out so I'd like to. Out for you this superpower that I've seen each of you have and then I would give and so I put each person's face on a slide I would say hey this is like for example hey this is derek derek's our designer derek what I've noticed is your superpower I don't know if you're aware of this but most designers that I've worked with they're creative types they're sort of like you know messy desk procrastinator types they pull all nighters when they get creative inspiration and they do amazing work sometimes and other times you know they get stuck with sort of a creative writer's block of sorts I said derek your superpower is that you're a great designer but you're like the mailman you deliver everyday at the same time right like I give you the the the brief I scribble a a scribble a poorly written address of where where where I'm trying to get this package and you're able to interpret it like a mailman and say oh I know where this is trying to go and then you deliver it every day at 5 pm before you leave and I said I you're like the mailman I said and you know you don't work on the weekends I know that you're not the type of guy that I should be hitting up for that like that crazy project where you do on the weekends so you're like the mailman you deliver every day of the week except for sundays and so I gave him basically a superpower which is you have this amazing ability to consistently take a loose set of instructions and deliver on it and I gave him a nickname that goes with it that's why I call you the mailman and then you know that's your super honor I gave it a little symbol and then I like you know then went to the next person I said oh this is furqan furqan is you know he's not gonna win any awards for for being the most eloquent speaker or the the most politically you know polished kind of guy but man when I when you talk to furkan it's almost like he's allergic to bullshit like you know when someone's allergic to peanuts you can't even have a peanut dish or you you feel uncomfortable taking peanuts around them because you might kill them I said that's what it's like when I bring bullshit around you I don't even feel comfortable saying bullshit around you because you're so good at seeing through bullshit and saying that doesn't make sense or wait I thought you said this other thing so how how could both of those be true right and so I you know you were like you were allergic to bullshit that is your superpower you just can't stand it and that because of that it makes the rest of us up our game and not bring that bring half baked plans or incongruent illogical plans to you because you'll sniff it out in a second and the beautiful thing is these things are both true and aspirational meaning they are this way but by giving it their superpower they then want to live up to that identity you've given them and so you can kind of architect the type of team you want by calling out areas they're good but they not may not be the best at it or they may not be doing it all the time but by giving them their superpower they will start to do it more often okay so that's the superpower technique okay I'm gonna give you 3 quick ones the tesla master plan if you've never read it elon musk wrote a master plan for tesla you know back when it started so he wrote the master plan v 1 like 10 years ago and then he wrote v 2 and basically he said master plan v 1 basically was like and you should go read it I've handwritten his many times and then wrote ours wrote my own plan for my own business after writing his and so his plan basically says tesla's job is to accelerate you know the the society's move off of fossil fuels onto sustainable energy to do that we need to create a car that's high performance and high efficiency and so we're gonna start with the roadster the expensive car then we're gonna make the next car then we're gonna make the the mass market model 3 car

Shaan Puri

blah blah blah and he's like you

Shaan Puri

know so in summary here's the master plan build an expensive car to to build the brand build a less expensive car to get more people on it then build the use the economies of scale and the and the learnings from production to build a mass market car that will get to everybody right that's the master plan and then he wrote a master plan v2 but it is very powerful if you can write the master plan for your company alright it's basically and it doesn't have to be right right but it's you putting it out there what are we here to do how do we plan to do it and like you know here's the takeaway and if you look at his writing style it's a very empowering style and so I like to take his master plan and then write my own alright the next one comes from the ceo coach called matt macari or something like that so here's this technique called the calendar audit it's very simple imagine you print out your calendar from the last week and you look at every every meeting that was scheduled every kind of block of time that you used and you take 3 highlighters you take a green highlighter that says that was something that I enjoyed that gave me energy you highlight those in green then you take a red highlighter you say these ones that I highlight in red are the ones that I felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body right like these are the soul crushing energy draining things that I dread parts things of my day that I don't look forward to you put those in red and then you have the yellow that are like neutral and you look at that and then you say okay this is an audit I now need to take these red things and I need to figure out over time how I'm gonna get more green than red right how I'm gonna phase all the red away and get to only green and that might be hiring somebody who does who likes doing that thing because what's red for you might be green for them or just getting rid of it or minimizing the time you do it and saying do we really need 3 meetings for this could we not just do it in 1 could this meeting be an email right or whatever so calendar audit is a very valuable technique okay so that was so so far we've had number 1 the doctor house screenshot technique number 2 my wife's holiday party work backwards question number 3 the if we got a beer saying you know saying man it's a bummer that thing failed why did it fail right that's number 3 number 4 is creating a safe space for the f murder mary game right who who are the 3 that you would double down on who are the 3 that you would cut 3 is just a magic number it might be 3,000 for you I don't know whatever it doesn't the number doesn't matter same idea what are the bottom 20% of things what are the top 20% of things so what you're trying to identify and with the promise of we're not taking an action on this right now so that's what 4 yeah that's 4 number 5 was tell each person their superpower and give it to your team as a presentation they will live up to that reputation number 6 is the tesla master plan number 7 is the calendar audit okay I'm gonna do 2 more maybe 3 number 8 is peer groups so anytime I have an objective like let's say I wanna become you know a great poker player or I wanna get to a 100000 twitter followers or I wanna build a d to c brand that does $50,000,000 a year I will create a text chat group of 5 other people who have who are in the same kind of ballpark as me of where they're at now and have that same ambition as their top ambition mentors and advisors overrated pure group underrated and so that's what I would do and I would start by texting them and then I would do like a once a month kind of call where we spend 3 hours on the phone or in person hanging out shooting the shit together sharing tactics and strategies what's working for them and trying to achieve your mutually shared goal okay last one is the kickoff document I think this is number 9 a kickoff document is a template that I have and I could share this but if you subscribe to my newsletter I think you get it so just go to seanporey.com and and I think you can get it or if not just email me at shawn@shawnporey.com okay so the kickoff document is basically something I do before I start a project because I believe that clarity is power and I think too often people go into doing something without actually being clear of what are we trying to do here why are we trying to do it how will we measure success and what's the first thing that we should really do and that's what a kickoff document does so the kickoff doc has 3 sections the first is what are we trying to do it's one liner the next is what's a win look like and I define a win in 2 ways I say what's the floor of this win meaning what is the minimum that I would consider like a successful good outcome like what's an achievable thing and then what's the f yeah win which is the like the the result that would make me safe f yeah then that really worked and so now I get kind of like a range I have like the bottom goal my floor goal and then I have my my my stretch goal and and then I also do an anti goal meaning what are some traps that I could fall into along the way that would like make this whole thing even if I hit my goals I would feel bad at the end of it because I like did this other thing right like for example we all have these in life like you know I would love to be successful but I don't wanna you know screw over people along the way and carry that guilt with me right so that's that's like being successful financially would be your goal I mean you put some numbers around it but then your anti goal would be I don't want to do this in a way that makes me feel unethical or ashamed in any way of what I did I'd like to feel proud of it right so those become your anti goals or like you know I'd like to be successful but I want to be able to make sure I'm home with my kids every day at 5 because that's really important to me so an anti goal would be yeah I made it happen but I'm never home right so my anti goal would be you know never getting home before you know x time and so it's important to identify your anti goals they're very clarifying for you and the kickoff doc ends with 1 hour your power hour basically like what's something I could do in the next hour that would just get like create like momentum get me to a win and so this is not like do some research or make a list it's like get momentum towards the actual outcome so if I wanna you know increase sales that's like make a sale make one sale or like if I wanted to grow my list my email list it's like I don't know post a thread on twitter in the next hour that will get some subscribers to my list just something to get the ball rolling that's action oriented so you're not just always in planning mode so those are 9 different little tips and tricks that really work for me that I don't think you'll learn most of those in I don't know business school or you know at your job that peep you know even if people try to do management training it's usually not things like this these are my kind of like you know unorthodox pet tricks that I like to do that help me you know with my companies and so I hope that's helpful for you if it is let me know you can tweet it at me at sean vp if it's not helpful tweet it at me saying hey you know wasn't that helpful honest feedback I love honest feedback so either way works for me I'm at sean vp which is s h a a n v p on twitter alright I'm out of here